Oladipo Ademola Esq

Most LifeHacker desktop showcases feature the desktop with the windows minimized. Seriously, how many people actually work with the windows minimized. My desktop allow me to work in almost any condition.

Because I have a widescreen, I used the advantage of width over height in the placement of my taskbar. I dragged it off to the right. Some of my fellows in the office, use the left side, but I found out that using one side for the “always on” windows was preferable (They do not use the vista sidebar – so…)

In my set up, I tried as much as possible, to use the base applications that come with the operating system, because in my opinion, windows becomes slow when you install applications on it. The base operating system is quite fast. Compare a 2 month system with a fresh installation, the old system has applications installed.

Theme
Vista Aero (Basic and Not) provide way too much eye candy that really helps work. So I patched my OS to allow other themes, and I installed Slan XP for Vista. Lovely theme (needs a few tweaks, but it works). I am using it as is. Microsoft, do I really need that 4 pixel border?

Taskbar
Like I said earlier, taskbar -> to the right, to the right. But you are not irreplacable (in my view). You just need to be upgraded. The right side placement allows me to use the start button on top, my running tasks, my quicklaunch (always visible) and other icons. It evens shows the full date and time (don need an extra clock on my desktop).

Start Button and Menu
A lot of people like to kill the start button, not me. It works just fine. Though, I must confess, I hardly use it. By now, many people would have guessed it. Yes, I do use the mouse a lot. Good mouse use, faster than the keyboard, but then again, there are pros out there.

Vista Sidebar
Placed by the taskbar (so that all by bars to right, windows to the left). I have the Lava Lamp gadget (probably the only non functional item on my desktop – purely for show).

The Outlook gadgets. I am a heavy outlook user – tried Thunderbird for 3 weeks and ran back to outlook like an addict. Yes, I am addicted to outlook. Thunderbird tries, but Outlook rocks.

I once tried downloading a notes gadget for the sidebar and cancelled the download before it started. The default notes gadget works well for me.

Multiple Desktops
I tried it a number of times – Deskscapes, Virtual Desktop Manager, Desktops. They all went the same route. Uninstallation. Just could not get used to it. Rather than have a radical new view of my desktop, I prefer easing myself into a new work layout. Close a program, open another. Minimize an application, restore another. And yes (yet again), a number of applications freeze when run on multiple desktop instances – think Firefox Portable.

Desktop Icons
My desktop is most times a temporary placeholder for some files before being moved to their respective locations. Usually, my desktop has only 1 icon. The default as Microsoft commanded it. The almighty recycle bin .

A lot of times, desktop showcases only showcase the visible portions. But we all know that some invisible applications make us very productive. My list includes:

• Nokia PC Suite. Continuous synchronization of my Nokia E61i. A must for me or any Nokia mobile phone user.
• Proxy Master: between home, office and a number of places, changing proxy settings used to be an issue, until this guy came along. Looking for an open source alternative.
• Media Monkey and Foobar2000. Great music players. I hardly play video. No point, my home theater does that very well.
• Picasa with the Facebook plugin. Lovely picture application. Nuff said.
• Windows Live Writer: an awesome desktop blogging application. Since most of my clients websites use WordPress as a CMS, I can easily update the sites from my system even if my Internet connection is misbehaving.
• MS Paint: quick application to paste my screenshot and remove un-needed portions.
• Jon’s Background Switcher: lovely program for finding backgrounds. Though it is on suspension, after it found the current wallpaper.I am so in love with it.